RE: Online Journalism

A conversation with

2005-12-07T18:29:00.000-08:00

Each blogger, has his or her own opinion of what blogging is and how it affects the mainstream media. In response to today's conversation in class about whether or not blogging is journalism

I thought I'd ask a blogger who has a best-selling book what he thought.

I interviewed Doc Searls (by e-mail) Searls, who has co-authored a best-selling business book, written for a popular Tech magazine, and also writes a blog, says that he receives the most hits on “Google” due to his blog, and not his other writing.

“Blogging is citizen journalism,” said Doc Searls, “It's how every citizen gets to publish his or her own Poor Richard's Almanac. Poor Richard made Ben Franklin the first blogger, I believe.”

“Thanks to blogs, I've switched from pushing rocks up hills to rolling snowballs down them,” said Searls, “Maybe a ball goes nowhere. Or maybe it gathers links and fresh thinking and grows in size and impact as it continues rolling.”

Just another blogger's thoughts on blogging's proponents ...

My Space and Catholic School

2005-11-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

"Ah but they never told you the price that you pay For things that you might have done ...

Only the Good Die Young" - Billy Joel

Billy Joel claims it's much more fun to laugh with the sinner than cry with the saints but one New Jersey Catholic High School student is not laughing with sinner or saints after he was expelled from school for what he said in a blog post.
After reading an article on mtv.com, I was intrigued by the story of Charlie Sepone, who was expelled from his school after posting a derogatory comment about his football coach on myspace.com, a personal website for person-to-person connections.

A recap of the article/ story:

Charlie is an 18 year old senior @ a Catholic High School in New Jersey. He was expelled from his high school for posting something "derogatory" about his football coach on myspace.com. According to an article in a local New Jersey paper, the school denied that Charlie was expelled but rather complied after being asked to leave.

Charlie is debating whether or not to take legal action against his high school. However, his free speech case is not so clear cut. Charlie attended a private Catholic school and they had an existing policy that stated a reason for possible expulsion for "impugning the character of another person." While the school's originial intentions of banning students' personal myspace pages was to protect them against sexual predator's, Charlie's situation opens an entirely new realm.

It will be interesting to see if Charlie sues his school.

I went to Catholic school and know how real this situation could be. Ever year my school held a class retreat. Freshman year the retreats were mandatory, every year following they were optional. I attended freshman and junior year retreats only. My juinor year someone in my class happened to write a livejournal posting about the lack of significance of the retreats and several other explicit view points regarding religion, what kind people attend those retreats, etc. etc. Some one in a Campus Ministry class printed out the postings and brought it to the attention of their teacher, who happened to run the retreats. Now, I am unclear if it was ever made known what student was attached to the specific livejournal name, but I know it happened to be an honor student. Whether or not that had any effect on the situation is unknown but it was dropped and the student was never addressed or repremanded. However, it could have gone much further very quickly.

The story just brough back memories of what could have happened in my high school.

Thoughts on the Charlie story?

Everybody's on the web...

2005-11-15T08:36:00.000-08:00

With over 1 million video iPods sold already, is the trend for TV to be watched on the go? We've got food on the go, TV in cars, so why not sitcoms on your laptop?

In an article in The Washington Post Express AOL and Warner Bro. has announced that beginning in 2006, they will offer a new broadband network called "In2TV." This network will include old sitcoms like "Welcome Back Kotter" and "Growing Pains" as well as games, polls and other interactive online features. The company plans to offer more than 100 TV shows and over 300 episodes during their first year in the market.

What about advertisements?

AOL and Warner Bros. didn't leave the ads out. There will be 2 min of advertisements every half hour show before and after the show as well as the normal commercial intervals.

In addition to that, there will also be the traditional banner ads that are seen online.

Will it be a success?

The World Of Classifieds

2005-11-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

Craigslist both popularized the world of free online classifieds and brought them to a whole new level. Now, Google wants to jump on the bandwagon. Every week Google seems to be rapidly developing new technologies and forming new partnerships. It seems that one of Google's next undertakings is the world of classifieds and retail. According to a recent article , it seems that Google has filed a patent for a section of Google called "Google Automat." People would be able to buy and sell things off this site much like on craigslist or eBay. However, slightly different from those two sights, the seller would enter in details into a formatted page and Google's techonology would create an ad / or a listing with the information. Google responded to this by saying that although they may have filed for a patent, only some patents become actual products.

That's not all Google has up their sleeve, though. There is also rumor that Google is developing a site called "Google Base" which would allow the public to add content to Google's website, forming giant database.

And yet another article suggests that Google may test out some print ads in several tech magazines baed out of Chicago. Up until now, Google has not had to advertise; it's growth and popularity has expanded so rapidly.

Blogging the campaign trail …

2005-11-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

On the legsilature side of things....

There has been much debate over campaign finance in relation to the Internet. Should blogs be included or not?

Wednesday the House voted on a bill that would have excluded blogs, emails, etc from FEC regulation but it was 47 votes short of passing.

Some lawmakers claim that the Internet has opened up a new loophole for unregulated and uncontrolled campaign spending. While this might be true, should the government have the right to regulate this? And where does the line end? If someone forwards a candidate’s press release to an email list serve…will they be fined?

The bill was introduced by Jeb Hensarling-R, Texas. Harry Reid, Senate Dem majority leader has introduced a companion bill BUT the Senate has yet to look at it.

We'll see what happens.. otherwise the government is in control.

Too busy to blog?

2005-11-03T08:08:00.000-08:00

Some interesting tid bit: DC Mayor Anthony Williams has a blog.

The complaint... he rarely updates. While Mayor Anthony Williams has plenty on his agenda he tried to update his blog once or twice a month. What is also interesting is that according to an article in The Examiner his press secretary said that, "sometimes even a great blog entry takes time to perfect."

His last update was Sept 29, 2005- though the entry was not posted by his staff until October 18.

I would have to disagree. The best blog entries with best news tidbits are sometimes on the spur of the moment and updated frequently, even though perhaps short entries. While analytic and lengthy blog entries might take some time to put together why even have a blog if you aren't going to update it? ... Politics I suppose. Have to keep up with technology.

Readers are allowed to post comments to the blog; however, no annoymous commenters will be accepted.

One blogger on a DC wesbsite, "DCist", claimed that there was a rude that in a blog isn't updated once every 30 days (at least) then that blog is considered dead.

The mayor's office, however, still refuses to bury the Mayor's blog.

A Course in Color

2005-10-30T14:14:00.000-08:00

I took a recommendation from my professor and decided to try an online news course called "color in news design" (for online news) from poynter.org

What I learned:

what colors make other colors seem lighter and darker and what colors adapt with their background colors.

Example: grey adapts with its background while a color like green does not does not

how color can add dimension and different hues can make pictures look differently.

A review of the course....

The most helpful exercises were when you were asked to read less and participate actively more. Some segments of the course had page design exercises where you could change the colors to create different looks and moods on a fake newspaper page. Those were the most effective because I was actually putting into action and seeing how color made a difference in the way an online page could look.

The color on the web section was slightly more applicable because one must remember that color varies from monitor to moniter.

Problems:

text was small and hard to read

some segments of the couse were really basic and some where slightly boring and art-class repititive

An Apple a day isn't keeping the lawyers away...

2005-10-25T06:08:00.000-07:00

Will one bad Apple ruin the bunch?

Sentiments about Apple seemed good... technology was flowing in a progressive direction: iPod Nano, Cingular's iTunes phone and the launch of the video iPod. But now it seems Apple is being sued..

Why?

According to this article on Motletyfool.com it seems that many customers are unsatified with their iPod Nanos. Many buyers claim that their display screens on their Nano are too fragile and break easily with simple wear and tear. Originally, Apple stated they would fix or replace anyone's Nano for free... it has also been my experience they do the same with regular iPod's as well.
For one man, Jason Tomczak, Apple's promise was not enough. His replacement Nano's screen broke as well. While he is only suing the company for a mere $25 plus the orignial cost of his Nano, word is that his lawyers want to make this a class action law suit. Tomczak also accuses Apple of knowing that their product had this defect/weakness when it was released.

Another recent article says that Apple refuses to comment on this lawsuit.

Hopefully more to come on this developing story...

Drumroll please....

2005-10-13T11:01:00.000-07:00

Here it is... what we've all been waiting for... well at least us techno gurus..

The new Video iPod.

Apparently Apple has sent out the official email newsletter.. not sure how I ended up with one but here it is...

Video iPod- Rumor or Reality

2005-10-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

Technology is happening so fast.. ipod nanos, multi-media blogs, talkphones on the Internet... the updates are never ending.

Recently is was rumored that Apple was launching a video iPod... so when is it hitting the market?

On ecost.com, an online retail website, they appear to be selling it... claiming one version can hold up to 150 hrs of video... is this something different?

Here's what AppleInsider had to say.

According to an aritcle in PR week about the new trends in technology, Disney and Apple are planning to sell episodes of "Desperate Housewives" via the new video iPod.

Will you be able to watch tv live? or just download previously aired episodes? What about TiVo? Will they develop TiVo for ipods? How much will this change or revolutionize national TV?

More to come on this soon...especially if Apple unveils their secret this week...

Number crunching...

2005-10-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

After our visit to Congressional Quarterly I did a little research inspired by one of the questions asked.

Someone asked if CQ was seeing a decrease in their print sales, like the New York Times seems to be per all their lay offs. I did a little research on both NY Times circulation figures as well as CQ’s.

Here’s what I found…

I called the NY Times office and they have a recorded message as to their circulation figures…

1,121,057 people subscribe to the NY Times paper Monday – Friday.

This costs $2.90 for 12 weeks. Let’s figure $14.50 for the whole year.

That means, roughly, that in a given year the revenue from these sales generates $1,755,326.

I was curious to see if CQ had enough subscribers who subscribe to their fairly expensive daily publication.

Here’s what Mr. Rapp had to say…

“Our circulation is as follows (approximate)

CQ Weekly -- 10,000

CQ Today -- 10,000

CQ.com -- 3,000 clients, about 200 who buy all 24 databases”

That means that @ $2400 for their print publication they conceivably bring in 24,000,000… way more than the NY Times.

To, me this was surprising.

Also, I was not aware that 200 customers subscribe to all 24 databases… @ $40,000 that’s $8,000,000. A lot of money for a lot of valuable information.

Just some figures I thought I’d throw out there for you…

On Kevin Sites...

2005-10-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

New Blog

Old Blog

So Yahoo is introducing a new live blogger: Kevin Sites.

What's so special about it?

It's the first multimedia 'news gathering' blog on Yahoo! complete with audio clips, photo essays, and video clips.

Who is he?

Works for NBC news as a foreign correspondent but is a solo/freelance journalist
his blogging is his own personal website, unaffiliated with NBC
Yahoo! is taking his old personal blog, redesigning it and changing the name to "In the HotZone"

What's the deal with his blog?

supposedly has non-edited content HOWEVER the pictures on the blog show a "In the Hotzone" team with both a producer, researcher and correspondent
The website really doesn't explain "The Team's" purpose
Interesting to note: readers may comment but Yahoo! reserves the right to "remove reptitive comments"

My problems with the site:

looks more like a commercial news site than a personal blog.
is this the beginning of a new wave of paid/commericial blogging?
loading takes a minute and the full text entries are not visible - too much going on
multimedia, like the interactive map was difficult for me to navigate
Personally, I like his OLD blog much better: take a look above.

What the expert had to say ..

2005-10-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

After posting some of my own thoughts on multimedia, I decided to consult with a technology and online guru, Mark Rasch and asked his thoughts on multimedia and current online news topics.

Here’s what he had to say on multimedia: “There has to be a reason you are using multimedia. When collected it often presents certain limitations. For example, you have to be able to understand the multimedia language. Therefore, you are limiting your target audience to those who can understand and who are capable to navigate it. On the other hand, A picture is worth is worth a thousand words – that’s why multimedia is used by bloggers from news organizations to terrorists.”

Who exactly is Mark Rasch?

Mark D. Rasch, J.D., is a former head of the Justice Department's computer crime unit, and is now a Senior VP and Chief Security Counsel at Solutionary, Inc. ( ie. Security risk management company as well as a columnist for Security Focus (ie. source for security information online).

I was put in touch with Mr. Rasch last year through one of my journalism professors for one of my papers and we conversed via email and phone. He has been an excellent expert source in the online media area, blogging, technology, etc.

Freedom of Press...no 90-day warranty

2005-09-29T11:32:00.000-07:00

Blogging & the Law… Topics of current debate:

Journalism shield law – A clarification

What is it? A law allowing for journalists to write while protecting their sources

But, who are journalists? People who are published? People who write stuff down about experience?

Currently, there are identical bills in Congress proposed by Senators Dodd (D-Conn) and the other by Pence (R-Ind) and Lugar (R-Ind)

The bills are awaiting committee hearings.

The Pence-Lugar bill would cover publishers, broadcasters and wire services and those who work for them. The definition would include freelance journalists who are working for a publisher or broadcaster, but not those without contracts or those who publish solely on the Web.

VS

The Dodd bill would cover a wider class of journalists including those who are covered by the Pence-Lugar bills and “electronic means of disseminating news or information to the public.” (aka Web news sites)

More on this to come…

Anonymous bloggers – Do they have the right to anonymous speech?

Who are they? Do they have a level of credibility? No introduction page? Or what his blog is about?

They’re posting online for everyone to see, but won’t post their identity… does that mean they speak more freely?

There are some who are now being targeted…

Example:

According to Inside HigherEd, St. Lawrence University, in NYC, is in a law suit with Time Warner Cable to have several student bloggers’ identities revealed. In a previous lawsuit Google gave their IP addresses but so far, Time Warner has refused to provide names with those IP addresses to the University. The bloggers have a website entitled “Take Back our Campus”, targeting conservative students and faculty. Because being an “anonymous blogger” is not in violation of any law, the University chose to sue for violation copyright laws claiming students took photos off the school’s website and posted them on the blog. One photo shows the University President with a bottle of gin and two topless women. The “Take Back Our Campus” blog URL has been since blocked from campus computer networks, but it was reported that the blog was still sending out content via email.

So, far this is most of the details of the case… updates to come as soon as they are available.

This is an interesting infringement on the 1st Amendment. It’s also quite interesting being that I, myself, am a college student.

Multimedia: What isn't it?

2005-09-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

According to Dictionary.com, multimedia is the "combined use of several media".

To me, multimedia means the website can deliver the 'news message' in text, audio, photos, video, or graphical displays (charts, maps, tables, etc.).

What doesn't work? ... Anything you have to wait for

I find that video is the one media that does not work so well for me....and for a couple reasons:

the connection is often not fast enough to support clear, large image video- we are a society that is getting more used to instant gratification, i.e. I don't want to wait

there is often a problem with the connection and my PC, i.e. I get a soft or hardware-type error, I don't have the software for avi, quicktime, pdf, whatever. For that matter, audio is a close relative of video; the video usually has audio and audio by itself is not usually sufficient for me. Websites are visually enabling, so audio by itself leave a sort of vacuum.

I also find that Pop-up ads OR length advertising is monotonous /boring.

There's one item that I'm not sure if it's media or not....interactive surveys. They're very helpful. They give the results of what others think, etc. after you vote or select. It's very interactive. The survey is sort of news, so maybe it's media.

Multimedia sends a message that would be difficult, if not impossible, to deliver by text alone, or by one medium alone.

That is all for now..

And in other news....

2005-09-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

On Blogging...

According to a story on news.com, what was once a worry about campaign finance laws effecting blogging is no longer.

Thursday, Congressional members “Internet politicking” should continue to be immune from campaign finance laws. Internet politiking basically means linking to and having paid political advertisements on online websites. Some congress members saw a need to regulate this, while bloggers pointed out that it would virtually be impossible to implement and keep track of. Bloggers also state that no one has sufficiently proven that political advertisements on websites have had a severe influence on politics or elections.

It will be interesting to follow this ongoing debate, especially in terms of campaign finance. The Internet has been and continues to be a problem in terms of legalities and legislation. Because of its immense size it is difficult to track and patrol.

Yakkity Yak..

2005-09-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

According to an article this morning in The Washington Post Express, one California-based company is launching a new personal technology product in mid-October. The new product is called “YackPack” and is essentially, a voicemail system on your computer. The new technology product allows users to receive or send out audio messages either to individual “buddies” or collective messages to a group. Each person in your “YackPack” gets their own picture icon. Another interesting online product called “DeleteNow” was launched by Uniprivacy Inc. This new tool allows users to remove their personal information from online search engines including major ones like Google. These products and other new inventions in the technology field were showcased at this week’s DEMOfall conference in CA.

Where technology is headed and all new innovations are interesting to me.

Just Google it.

2005-09-21T05:17:00.000-07:00

News, news, and more news...

What is news anymore? For many people, it's simply additional information they didn't know. The internet has provided so much information in such abundance and in so many different ways. One can receive the latest headlines, sports scores, stock market quotes, alerts to their PC, even cell phone. But is that considered news that they’re receiving? On reporting side...the public, in many ways are now acting as a reporter via video, pictures, call-ins, text messaging, and blogs.

This week in the online news realm the focus seems to be around Google. According to a story reported by Reuters, Google is in the works of launching a wireless Internet service. According to Google’s website the new service will be called “Google WiFi.”

Google made headlines again, with a story at news.com, with plans to hold a ‘partner forum’ for approximately 400 media folk including journalists, from the NYT for example, and bloggers alike. The catch, however, is that participants are prohibited from writing about the event.

Last week in class it was mentioned that Craig Newmark, of Craigslist fame, wanted to enter into the real of journalism. This week I noticed Craig’s name twice in the news/media world. This past weekend one of the major networks aired a piece on Craigslist. They gave a little history of Newmark and the site but mainly focused on the newly formed section of Craigslist devoted to helping Katrina victims. What is more interesting regarding Craig and his quest to enter the world or journalism is that his name is featured in the “I Want Media” online newsletter produced by The media center in conjunction AP headquarters in NYC.

A little history on Craig:

It’s rumored Craig was considered nerdy in high school and after working as a security guard for a major corporation he decided to start an email list to tell people about cool events in the San Francisco area to improve his social live. It began as an email list to just friends and eventually grew to where it is today.

As it turns out the Media Center hosted a series of “conversations and collaborations on participatory media.” One featured speaker was Craig Newmark. Newmark was one of many speakers including the president of CBS and the GM of Yahoo!, among others. While it appeared that Newmark was one of the authors of the newsletter, it was more of a shameless plug for their conference. At any rate, Newmark is gaining credentials and notoriety; it should be no time at all before he lands another journalist gig.

Blogging is Appearing Everywhere

2005-09-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

Just a little interesting news tidbit in the realm of blogging:

It seems that everyone is taking advantage of the benefits of blogging. Today, The Wall Street Journal's paper edition reported that several colleges and universities are posting students' blogs on their Admissions website to give prospective students a tast of what college life is like at that particular insitution. Two examples were Simmons College in MA and Lewis and Clark College in OR. Nothing was posted about this information on the Simmons Website or on their Admissions page. However, on Lewis and Clark's Admissions website for the Liberal Arts school they had a blurb that beginning Sept. 21 they would have 9 students "sharing their life with you" for the 05/06 school year.

That is all for now.

Online News: Google

2005-09-12T17:45:00.000-07:00

Google as a search engine, began in 1998

Google News:

Launched in Sept 2002, four years after the birth of Google.
A tab link on Google’s main site

In 2002:

Was simply a series of links categorized by headlines into: News, World, US, Business, Entertainment, Tech, Sports

Also an option to search the latest headlines

Design: No graphics, video, pictures or color

In 2005:

Looks more like a modern news layout page:

News Categories are now sidebars with addition of health news / science and technology

Headlines are links with mini topic sentences with two related top stories and a link to all related stories organized by newspaper

Now can browse up to 4,500 news sources
Browsing articles within last 30 days
Able to customize news page with the layout of your choice
have a list of ‘people in the news’
updated every 15 minutes, approximately
can get updated live feed… which is a regularly updated summary of new web content on their page
Can get emailed news alerts
Can email them feedback
Over 20 different country’s languages it translates to
Can search by country, newspaper, topic, etc. in the advanced search option

Missing: Videos, Citizen journalism, flashy graphics, advertisements

Evolution of news from online services created competition for other news services like Google. It opened up the realm for competition and increased how often Google updates their news sites in order gain readership.

Other web-based browsers allow you to view news immediately when you sign onto the internet, thus you can set your homepage to Google news, having it be itself like a web-based browser.

Yahoo and other ISPs impacted Google greatly. Many other ISPs had news websites before Google even got its start. Only launching its News section in 2002, Google had many other competitors’ sites to compare ands base itself off of. In terms of news strategy, other search portals contain only links to news stories. Google followed suit. Google has no human editors are involved. Instead, Google’s headlines are selected by “computer algorithms.” Top stories are selected by how many times and on what other sites a story appears.

2005-09-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

Comparison of Online Coverage in Hurricane Afflicted Areas:

“Everything New Orleans” - a web site for the local New Orleans online news...in conjuntion with the Times-Picayune, a newspaper of the area.

Mississippi Sun Herald - a website dedicated to news coverage in Biloxi and Southern Mississippi

At nola.com, you will get the local flavor of the coverage of the situation in New Orleans. It is solely dedicated to victims, rescue efforts and survivors. The latest news, headlines and news from the New Orleans times-picayune is all hurricane related.

Interesting editoral- Renquist’s replacement should not be a distraction to hurricane relief efforts.

There are photo galleries, missing persons database, help section from new Orleans business, pet rescue links, in memory of…, what happened to my neighborhood link and a link to submit your story, and a link for updates on various schools and sports teams.

Great site for information and people from or who have family in NO but is it helping?

Over 4000 people are listed on the “I’m okay” forum. One slight drawback is that no one under the age of 13 is allowed to post.

Mississippi Coverage:

Website Tragically asking reporters/sun herald employess to call in if okay

Top stories all dealing with the hurricane.. for example, casinos look to get working again

"Finding beauty among the ruins…" MS website has a more positive spin to the hurricane news coverage

There are maps, photos and even video on this website, as opposed to no video links on nola.com

There are links to where to offer your help and a guest book for condolences but less avenues to find missing persons or post your survival story.

testing

2005-08-31T17:39:00.000-07:00

testing